


Variety is the Splice of Life

by NervousAsexual



Category: BioShock
Genre: Arcadia - Freeform, Dancing, Gen, Original Character(s), Shooting, Singing, a triple threat, original character splicer, splicer - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 14:31:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6379951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousAsexual/pseuds/NervousAsexual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A vaudeville song girl turned Houdini splicer stumbles across the telekinesis plasmid and proceeds to wreak all kinds of havoc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Variety is the Splice of Life

Maggie awoke in the morning amid the flowers from her many, many admirers. They lay scattered about the sleeping-porch and the tea garden itself and the air was awash in their sweet, sweet scent. Maggie let the morning air roll over her and it was all the breakfast she needed. 

She was dancing the moment her feet touched the floor, humming to herself.

"Of all the boys I've known and I've known some," she sang, traipsing down to the clear clear brook on her sweet slender ankles and delicate feet, "until I first met you I was lonesome." She looked down into the brook and considered her cute red party dress. Nice, but too flaky for a day like today. "And when you came in sight, dear, my heart grew light and this old world seemed new to me." Nobody mastered the quick change like dear old Maggie and she put out her arms and spun before the brook. The little red party dress became a long red evening gown, then a flapper skirt with a fringe, and finally a soft swingin' ostrich feather dress like Ginger wore in Top Hat. Perfection itself.

"You're really swell, I have to admit you deserve expressions that really fit you," she sang, curtsying to the flighty young man wringing his hands in the door to the metro. "And so I've racked my brain hoping to explain all the things you do to me." She tapped her way down the trail toward the dear little cemetary, and there was a pop like a bottle of champaigne being opened. She came up to the mausoleum and peered around the corner. It was there she saw that sweet young man in the Aran sweater emerge from behind the green green trellis and head toward the tomb off to one side. 

Maggie spun like a top, feathers flying around her, down to the other end of the mausoleum. The boy in the sweater carried flame-red flowers in one hand and in the other--she couldn't quite tell, was that a clarinet? Was he another hopelessly romantic fan come to seranade her? Really, there was no need for that. Maggie could always hear the music playing high in the air.

The boy in the sweater snapped his fingers and the flowers blossomed forth madly, alighting in the torch beside the tomb doors. How beautiful! What a dear idea! Such a sweet young man! nothing like those awful boys in Arcadia, with their bizarre choice of domino masks and faint scent of burnt hair.

Maggie stepped from behind the mausoleum but he did not see her (probably; he was staring, entranced, as the tomb doors rolled back). So she lifted her voice and sang, "Bei mir bist du schein, please let me explain..."

The boy in the sweater jumped a mile, the flowers blooming again in his hand.

"Bei mir bist du schein means you're grand," sang Maggie, wiggling her shoulders so that the red ostrich feathers danced around her. "Bei mir bist du schein, again I'll explain..." She danced up to the boy and ran a finger down the sweater. "It means you're the fairest in the land."

The boy looked at her and looked at the ostrich feathers and then he raised up the clarinet and shot her twice in the shoulder.

It was as if she'd touched a live wire. She froze for an instant, shaking like a leaf in the wind, and then she threw out her hands and ran toward the metro.

"Help," she shrieked. "Help, a madman!" Where was that terrible flighty man? It occurred to her to try to reason with the man--she turned and threw out her hands pleadingly. He screamed, slapping at his sweater as if her very gesture burned, and while he was distracted she ran.

She couldn't remember entering the metro or climbing the stairs, but abruptly she stumled across the flighty man, idly punching at the Prime Health Unit.

"Give me the meds!" she shrieked, shoving him aside. "Get them for me NOW!"

She jammed her arm into the arm rest and waved her hand about like a malfunctioning security bot. "That... that... hoodlum! Tried to kill me! Oh, Jesus, what did he do to me?" She sniffed away the tears. "Smells like burnt hair... Everything is ruined!"

The flighty man stared at her, eyes blank and glazed.

"Don't look at me! Don't look at me like that!"

"Don't look at me," he repeated. Slowly a grin spread across his face, wide, wide, widely smiling.

She flinched as the needle pinched into her arm. Horrible needles. Couldn't there be a better way to heal one pain than with another. "There's a horrible man in the tea garden! One of those roughnecks from Neptune's Bounty, shooting the place up!" When the man only grinned she slapped at him with her free hand. "Oh, land's sakes, you. Help me!"

"Help me!" he mimicked.

She growled and at that he fizzled in a burst of rose petals. Somewhere in the distance she heard his voice take up the cry again, shouting, "Help! Help!"

Men, Maggie scoffed to herself as the stinging bullet wounds began to cease their throbbing. What were they good for? Getting yourself knocked up, and that was hardly a point in their favor. Oh, in a pinch they could open the clasp on your necklace or open a jar of pickled beans when you couldn't be bothered to fetch the opener. But for the most part, she decided as the needle retracted and she pulled her arm from the med station, they were really quite dim.

On that note, she stepped back and gave the ostrich feather gown a good shake. The long dress retreated up her long luscious legs and reformed as a smart little A-line skirt. It wasn't fair, really, except from an evolutionary standpoint, to let that poor dumb man run down and get shot up.

So back down to the tea garden she trotted, growing more and more resentful every step. Wasn't this supposed to be a man's job, after all?

The sounds of gunfire drew increasingly near, and the temperature rose as well. Humming along to a piano playing somewhere in the air, Maggie popped into the shrubs and took a good long peek.

The flighty man, it turned out, was in fact quite capable in the art of self-defense. First he was there in front of the boy in the grubby sweater, shouting more nonsense and mimicry, then he was behind him, flinging smoldering flowers at the boy's shoulders, with hardly a step in between. It was almost like a dance, and Maggie found herself nodding her head to the faraway beat.

The poor boy--just a child, really, the kind of boy who sent flowers by post so that all that came from the pneumotube was a sad handful of bald stems and a battered, anonymous note tied to the leaves--was hardly a match for the flighty man. He collapsed in a smoldering heap.

Such a shame, really, but that ought to teach him to shoot young women with his horrid clarinet.

She stepped from the brush, gave a nod to the flighty man, but he just stared back blankly. His front was all covered in budding flowers. Very avant-garde. She danced toward him, but instead of joining he turned and trotted off in the direction from which he had come.

Maggie sighed. It was so difficult to hold an audience's attention these days.

She knelt down beside the still-smoking boy and rummaged a bit in his pockets--not for any devious reason, of course, but she deserved a little something for her troubles. He wasn't carrying much. A brass tube, a shell casing, a broken Booze Hound hypo--what a surprise--and, tucked in his belt and cushioned by the smoldering sweater, an unbroken hypo with labeled with a word she'd never seen before.

"Tee... teele-kin-es-is," she sounded out. What it meant she could only imagine.

Oh well, she thought, rolling up her sleeve. It could mean the same as wunderbar, for all she cared, because she could always use more Eve.


End file.
